The History of the World Series of Poker

The first World Series of Poker took place at Binion’s Horseshoe in the spring of 1970, although some historians like to point back to a much earlier poker competition as the starting point for what would eventually become the WSOP.

Benny Binion first came from Dallas to Las Vegas in 1946, and soon would purchase the El Dorado casino on Fremont Street, renaming it the Binion’s Horseshoe. The Horseshoe quickly became known for its high-stakes games, thanks in part to the sign Binion hung above the casino’s front door: “THE WORLD’S HIGHEST LIMITS.” Not long after Binion’s Horseshoe opened, a high-rolling banker and real estate maven named Nick “the Greek” Dandalos came looking for the biggest game in town and was introduced to Binion. Binion called his friend Johnny Moss from Texas, and arranged to have Moss and Dandalos play a heads up match at the Horseshoe.

The match -- which according to some took place in 1949, to others in 1951 -- would last several months, with Moss ultimately finishing well ahead of his opponent, by most accounts by about $2 million. The match drew numerous onlookers, so much so that Binion eventually had the players move the game closer to the casino’s entrance so as to attract more foot traffic into the Horseshoe.

Some speak of that legendary match between Moss and Dandalos as having planted the seed for Binion’s idea to invite the world’s best poker players to the Horseshoe for a World Series of Poker, although a similar event having taken place in Reno in 1969 likely provided a more direct inspiration. That event, staged at the Holiday Casino in Reno by Tom Moore, was called the “Texas Gamblers Reunion,” and involved most of the same individuals who would show up a year later at Binion’s for the inaugural WSOP.

That first World Series of Poker saw a total of seven players gather at the Horseshoe: Crandall Addington, Doyle Brunson, Carl Cannon, Johnny Moss, Walter “Puggy” Pearson, Brian “Sailor” Roberts, and Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston. Rather than play a single tournament, the group played a series of cash games, including deuce-to-seven draw, seven-card stud, razz, five-card draw, and no-limit hold’em. In the end, a vote was held to determine who would claim the title of “World Champion Poker Player.” One version of the story -- very possibly a tall tale -- suggests that on the first vote each of the seven voted for himself, requiring a second vote in which each was asked to name the second best player. In any event, Johnny Moss was named the WSOP Champion, for which he was awarded a silver cup.

When the WSOP was restaged at Binion’s the following year, it was decided to play a $5,000 buy-in, winner-take-all, no-limit hold’em freeze-out tournament to determine the champion. Four preliminary events were also played that year in five-card stud, seven-card stud, razz, and ace-to-five draw. In addition to winning the ace-to-five draw event, Moss also bested five other players in the Main Event to take his second WSOP title.

The following year, Binion decided to increase publicity for the World Series by matching the players’ $5,000 buy-in for the Main Event with $5,000 of his own money. Eight players entered the event, and Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston emerged as the victor. Over the following months, Preston would appear numerous times on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and other outlets, promoting himself, Binion’s Horseshoe, and the World Series of Poker.

In 1973, the World Series was still a relatively small affair, with just eight events total and 13 players entering the Main Event, the buy-in for which had been hiked to $10,000 (where it has remained ever since). However, thanks in part to Preston’s year-long publicity campaign, the WSOP received more media coverage than ever before. According to Benny Binion, a total of 7,000 newspaper and magazine articles appeared concerning the 1973 WSOP. And CBS even filmed a documentary hosted by Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder. After finishing runner-up the last two years running, Walter “Puggy” Pearson finally broke through and won the Main Event that year, besting Crandall Addington heads up.

It was at that 1973 WSOP that Nevada historian Mary Ellen Glass interviewed Benny Binion who spoke to Glass about the future of the World Series. Referring to the number of players in the Main Event, Binion said he hoped to have 20 enter the following year. “It’s even liable to get up to be fifty,” said Binion. “Might get up to be more than that; it will eventually.”

That next year the WSOP didn’t quite reach Binion’s goal, as 16 players entered the Main Event, won by Johnny Moss who claimed his third WSOP title in five years. But in 1975 it would, with 21 players entering the Main Event won by Brian “Sailor” Roberts. That was also the first year that all event winners received gold bracelets, which would become one of the WSOP’s better known traditions.

The next two years saw Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson win his back-to-back Main Event titles, thereby earning a permanent place in poker lore. On the final hand of both of his victories, Brunson held the humble ten-deuce as his hole cards, ensuring that the hand would subsequently be referred to as “The Brunson.” Soon after his victories, Brunson would publish his ground-breaking strategy text Super/System. The second of those years, 1977, was the first one which saw the total number of events at the World Series of Poker reach double digits, with a total of 12 events being played. The WSOP would continue to feature around a dozen total events until the late 1980s when more preliminary events would start to be added.

As it happened, one of the writers who contributed to Brunson’s Super/System was the 1978 Main Event champion, Bobby Baldwin. The year Baldwin won the Main Event was the first in which the tournament was no longer played as a winner-take-all event. That year 42 players entered the main event, and the top five finishers cashed. Baldwin took half of the prize pool, $210,000, for his victory.

The following year, 1979, the 10th year of the World Series, was the first in which an amateur player, Hal Fowler, would win the Main Event. Fowler defeated pro Bobby Hoff in a memorable heads up battle in which the amateur would win the final hand by cracking Hoff’s pocket aces with a turned seven-high straight. The next year saw Stu “the Kid” Ungar win his first WSOP Main Event. Although Ungar’s reputation as a gin rummy expert had been well established by the time he arrived at the 1980 WSOP, the Main Event that year was apparently was the very first no-limit hold’em tournament Ungar had ever played. Showing his victory was no fluke, Ungar won the Main Event again in 1981.

The following year would be the first in which more than 100 players entered the WSOP Main Event, with a total of 104 coming out. That year, Jack “Treetop” Straus (his nickname a reference to his 6’6” stature) won the Main Event after staging the most improbable comeback in WSOP history. At an early stage of the tournament, Straus had pushed all in on a hand and lost, only to discover he still had a single $500 chip left under a napkin. Because he hadn’t declared himself all in on the hand, Straus was allowed to continue playing, and eventually would battle his way back to claim all of the chips and the $520,000 first prize. The comeback has entered poker lore as one of the most famous examples of a player making the most out of having but “a chip and a chair.”

The following year, Tom McEvoy won the title after winning his way into the Main Event via a satellite tournament. In fact, a significant number of that year’s field had won their $10,000 seats via satellites. Not coincidentally, the World Series Main Event was starting to see many more amateur players competing for poker’s ultimate prize. According to Eric Drache, who served as tournament director at the WSOP through much of its early growth and who is often credited with having come up with the idea of satellites, over half of the 108 entrants into the WSOP Main Event in 1983 were non-professionals, many of whom had won their way into the tournament via the satellite route.

The Main Event would continue to attract more players over the following years. In 1984, “Gentleman” Jack Keller won $660,000 for coming out on top of a field of 132 players. In 1985, Bill Smith won $700,000 and the Main Event bracelet as the best of 140 runners. In 1986, there were 141 entrants, although winner Berry Johnston’s first prize was less than Smith’s had been -- $570,000 -- thanks to a much-altered schedule of payouts. In 1985, only the top nine players cashed in the Main Event. However, in 1986, the top 36 players cashed.

The next two years saw the “Orient Express,” Johnny Chan, win back-to-back Main Event titles. Chan would nearly win an unprecedented third straight title, but came up short after losing heads up to Phil Hellmuth, Jr., who at 24 years old was at the time the youngest Main Event champion ever. The following year, 1990, Iranian Mansour Matloubi became the first non-American to win the WSOP Main Event after coming out on top of a field of 194 entrants. (The Hong Kong-born Chan was an American citizen at the time of his victories.)

In 1991 a few different milestones were reached at the WSOP. That year a total of 18 bracelet events were staged, the most ever to that point. For the first time, the Main Event attracted more than 200 entrants, with a total of 215 competing. And Brad Daugherty, that year’s champion, became the WSOP’s first-ever million-dollar man, winning an even $1 million for taking the Main Event title. First prize would remain fixed at $1 million for the rest of the 1990s before jumping to $1.5 million in the year 2000.

Hamid Dastmalchi, another Iranian-born player, won the Main Event in 1992. There were 201 entrants that year, meaning it was the first time since 1971 there were fewer entrants in the Main Event than the year before. The numbers would begin climbing once again, however, as 220 entered in 1993, the year Jim Bechtel won the Main Event. 1993 was also the year of the multiple-bracelet winner. Ted Forrest and Phil Hellmuth, Jr. both won three bracelets that year -- and Hellmuth finished runner-up in a fourth event. Humberto Brenes also won two bracelets in 1993.

The following year marked the 25th year of the World Series of Poker, and to commemorate that milestone, Jack Binion (Benny’s son) came up with an idea to award the Main Event winner his or her weight in silver in addition to the $1 million first prize. The heavy-set Russ Hamilton won the tournament, and as he tipped the scales at 330 lbs., he took home an additional 43 bars of silver, worth about $28,000.

Dan Harrington would win the Main Event in 1995. Harrington would later return to two more Main Event final tables in 2003 and 2004, as well as author his influential Harrington on Hold’em books on no-limit hold’em tournament strategy. In 1996, Huck Seed won the Main Event, though few other than those gathered at Binion’s ever saw it. That’s because after several consecutive years of providing coverage of the Main Event, ESPN chose not to do so in 1996.

ESPN would be back, however, in 1997, the only time the Main Event final table was ever played outside on Fremont Street. That was the year Stu Ungar made his triumphant return, winning his third Main Event bracelet 16 years after he’d won his second. That was also the first year the Main Event attracted more than 300 players, as 312 entered. Unfortunately, a lifetime of drug addiction caught up with Ungar and he died the following year at the age of 45.

“You call, gonna be all over baby.” Those were the words Scotty Nguyen said on the final hand of the 1998 WSOP Main Event to Kevin McBride after having pushed all in against his short-stacked opponent with the board showing a provocative . McBride did call, announcing “I play the board.” Then he asked, “you have a nine?” Indeed, Nguyen did have a nine, and thus won the title. “If he hadn’t have said that, I’d have folded the hand,” said McBride afterwards to ESPN’s Vince Van Patten.

Irish carpet manufacturer Noel Furlong won the Main Event in 1999, finishing first in a field of 393 players. The next year Chris “Jesus” Ferguson defeated T.J. Cloutier heads up to win the title. That year saw the Main Event field jump to 512 players, the largest single-year increase to date in the number of entrants for the WSOP Main Event. That was also the year journalist James McManus finished fifth in the Main Event, a journey he subsequently documented in his well-regarded narrative Positively Fifth Street.

There were 26 total bracelet events in 2001, including the Main Event, won by Carlos Mortensen of Ecuador, who like Ferguson the year before took home $1.5 million for his victory. Until 2001, the Main Event final table had always been played six-handed, aside from 1998 when thanks to a double-knockout only five players made the last day of play. However, in 2001 the final table was played nine-handed, as has been done ever since.

Mortensen’s victory marked the last time a professional poker player would triumph in the Main Event. In 2002, investment banker Robert Varkonyi won the Main Event and the $2 million that went along with it. That year also saw a total of 35 events on the WSOP schedule. The following year an accountant from Tennessee with the highly appropriate name Chris Moneymaker defeated poker pro Sam Farha heads up to win the Main Event.

Thanks in large part to ESPN’s extended coverage of the WSOP Main Event that year (a total of seven one-hour episodes were produced chronicling the tournament) -- as well as the highly compelling story of Moneymaker’s underdog victory -- the popularity of poker and the WSOP soared. A total of 839 players had competed in 2003. Then, in 2004, a whopping 2,576 players took their shot to become the next Moneymaker. Multiple starting days had to be arranged to accommodate the large field. In the end, another amateur, Greg Raymer (a corporate attorney), won the Main Event, claiming a record $5 million prize for his first-place finish.

By the time the 2005 World Series of Poker rolled around, Harrah’s Entertainment had taken over sponsorship of the WSOP, and the majority of that year’s Series was played at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. The final table of the Main Event, however, was played at Binion’s, and Australian Joe Hachem came away the winner, earning $7.5 million. The field more than doubled that year, as 5,619 players entered.

In 2006, the entire WSOP was held at the Rio. There were 46 events total that year, culminating in a Main Event that attracted 8,773 players -- still the record for the most entrants ever for a WSOP event. Jamie Gold won the $12 million first prize (also a still-standing WSOP record), with the final table broadcast live via pay per view by ESPN. Many thought the field for the Main Event would exceed 10,000 the following year, but legislation passed in the United States designed to block citizens’ access to online poker sites had a negative effect on players’ ability to qualify for the tournament via online satellites, and the 2007 WSOP Main Event saw a dip in entrants to 6,358. Jerry Yang won the title that year, earning $8.25 million.

Also in 2007, Phil Hellmuth won a preliminary event in no-limit hold’em, thus giving him his 11th World Series of Poker bracelet. With that victory, Hellmuth took over the all-time lead for most WSOP bracelets, moving him past Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan who both have 10 bracelets.

Both 2007 and 2008 saw a record number of 55 bracelets awarded at the WSOP. Additionally, a World Series of Poker Europe series was staged in the fall of both years, at which more bracelets were awarded. The WSOP had become a truly worldwide phenomenon, as further indicated by the fact that players from 124 different countries competed at the 2008 WSOP.

The 2008 WSOP Main Event attracted 6,844 entrants, who took nearly two weeks to play down to the final nine. Those nine then waited nearly four months before returning to the Rio to play the tournament out in November. Peter Eastgate of Denmark ultimately won the title, taking home $9,152,416 for his victory. At just 22 years of age, Eastgate was the youngest Main Event winner in history.

The World Series of Poker has certainly come a long way since its humble beginnings back in 1970. One might look back at the anointing of Johnny Moss as the “World Champion Poker Player” at that first WSOP as perhaps having required a bit of hyperbole. After all, only seven players had competed for the title! But four decades later, the World Series of Poker has clearly evolved into the most prestigious, best known poker series in the world, a true test of poker skill that attracts the world’s best players year after year.